Faults
by Weezila
Summary: Tony Stark continuously alternates between being the egotistical genius playboy we love, calling all the world to kneel before him, and a self-destructive, self-loathing man who can't even look Captain America in the eye much less think up a solid reason his life is worth a dime. LOTS of Tony angst for his less than mighty moments.
1. The Cold of the Ice

**Hello Internet:**

**Warning, there's a shit-ton of angst in here. **

**Secondly, this is going to be a series of one-shots of just how screwed up and awesome the one and only Tony Stark is. **

**Thirdly, I kinda want to turn this into one of those stories like "oh, the team gets transported into Tony's mind and they see how screwed up and totally not like himself he really is" but I have no idea how to do that in a way that **_**isn't**_** totally ripping off someone else's idea. I need time to figure that out, but in the mean time I just love these one-shots and think they can be units in themselves. Don't correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't care. **

**And, I think I'll get around to doing that proper story that encompasses angsty one-shots from the entire team, but it just so happens there are **_**a lot**_** more for Tony because he's, like, **_**Tony.**_

**Anyway, enjoy!**

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"_Sir, Director Fury of S.H.E.I.L.D is on the line." _Jarvis's monotone broke in from the blare of music in the lab.

Tony glanced up from where he was fiddling with the hologram of his latest repulsor design. "Oh, and what does old Popeye want? Another contract? Because I swear the _firewalls_ on that guy-"

"_Sir, he says you would want to know immediately."_

Tony huffed and pushed the hologram away. Director Fury always managed to piss him off, if for no other reason than he was equally as good at keeping secrets as he himself was.

Which meant Tony mistrusted his very existence, and was rather annoyed the man kept calling to talk weapons. He wasn't _interested_ in weapons he wasn't using for his suit, _thankyouverymuch. _Every single weapon he _did_ make was tracked with so much meticulous care that Tony could list off the top of his head where each one in the world was currently with 97.4% accuracy. Shield didn't like giving up their secrets, but they needed weapons. Tony did weapons, but he did NOT do secrets—at least, not when he wasn't in on them. It was a constant impasse that had given both he and Fury more migraines than they could count.

"Fine, put him through." Tony snapped unhappily.

"_Stark."_

"What'd you want?" He demanded dismissively. But there was a pause, which immediately struck Tony as extremely odd and incredibly bad. Fury didn't hesitate or mince words—again, another trait he abhorred to admit he shared with the man.

"…_we found him."_

Tony froze.

Every cell in his being stopped for that one moment.

Then he felt his artificial heart shatter.

_0000000 Later 0000000_

Who knows how long later he was standing in a lab so secure its very presence was doubted even by the hundreds of agents currently working in the complex. Fury himself was walking them down, Coulson accompanying them with the ever-present agent Hill shadowing silently behind.

He could never know what Fury was thinking, but Coulson at least was relaxed enough to spare him an excited smile after awhile. Even the stoic Hill smiled a bit every time the discovery was mentioned.

Somehow, the chipper mood only made Tony feel more depressed. Angry even.

At the same time he _was_ happy. How the holy hell was that possible? How could he be as excited as a child on Christmas, curious beyond belief, completely dreading and nearly convinced he should just kill himself right there, all at the same time?

His head was spinning, and for a man who could figure out fourteen different higher level quantum physics equations, three hundred pages of code, and four new project designs complete with extensive experimental calculations all simultaneously in his brain without so much as blinking, that was most certainly saying something. He felt sick, he felt like he wanted to cry or yell and slap that goofy smile off Coulson or punch Fury in his good eye and yet all he could decide on was to simply follow, and watch.

"Where?" He asked, surprising even himself with how even his voice came out.

"Just north of the Arctic circle." Coulson answered easily. "Radiation from the old bombs he had on board distorted our readings while searching, but the satellite program you developed for us in seeking out the remaining Starktech was able to compensate and pinpoint it."

Tony almost let out a hysterical laugh, but schooled himself just in time.

So it was his fault?

Well, fault was a strong word, it wasn't _fault_ so much as…

Yes, it was his fault.

He had designed that program to hash out every corner of the earth in which his weapons had landed, so he could either track them and their uses or destroy them as need be. He supposed…in a way… that stupid shield was Starktech too. Vibranium was one of the—if not _the—_rarest substance on the planet; the only people on earth who'd accumulated more than unusable traces by accident was the Stark family. Tony had used it a couple times in his more special creations, things he'd wanted back immediately once he realized they weren't being used for good, but the program had been set, and then…

It was all his fault.

Not that he wasn't happy, not that it wasn't his program and his funding, not that this wasn't what his father had spent every spare moment of his life trying and failing to do whereas Tony succeeded _inadvertently_, but it just…

He felt like something inside him was off. He couldn't place it. Contrary to popular belief, while he may have act self-absorbed, but he was actually the most self-_aware_ person on the planet.

He knew his faults better than anyone could ever know themselves or know another person. He knew them, and he worked with them.

_This_ was one of his faults, but he had no clue where to go with it—it was one of the only unresolved things left in his world. For all his life he'd been ignoring it in the extremely useless hope that it'd just go away.

Captain _freaking_ America.

Steve Rodgers, as his father would never for a second let him forget, had been a better man than Tony would ever be. Apparently, he still _was_ a better man, seeing as he wasn't entirely dead just yet.

And before he knew it he was there, in a room full of highly amped up scientists trying to tackle the problem in front of them: how to get the world's greatest hero out a huge block of ice without killing him further.

"We got him half out, intending on a proper burial, when they realized he was still alive." Fury said, walking towards the center of all the fuss. Tony didn't want to look, but at the same time he was dying to—and it wasn't like he was about to show weakness in front of the man he mistrusted most in the world. "This is Dr. Kane, he's been in charge so far, but they've hit a snag." He introduced to a haggard looking man, tall and thin but with a fiery determination in his eyes.

"The Captain _is_ alive," He said, jumping right into the task at hand as he greeted Stark with a nod. "His heart is beating at sub-EKG frequency, but spikes in abnormal radiation caused us to look more into it and realize it was still functioning, if not slightly frozen over. The strange radiation is keeping his cells from decaying, but they're not allowing the serum he was injected with to fully heal them. The more we unfreeze, the more damage we fear we're doing, but as it stands we simply just don't know much for sure." He explained quickly.

"Must be the serum," Tony said shortly. _This_ he knew: he could talk all day about science, just not… everything else clouding his head. "It had altered versions of radioactive ions forced into a diatomic state; it probably stayed in his cells and is keeping permafrost from taking over." He recited quickly. At Fury's raised eyebrow he scoffed loudly. "Don't give me that, you know Howard was obsessive over this stuff. That was the main reason he never thought Rodgers was dead." He dropped the information without care, not bothering to give a damn about the significant looks the agents—and scientists— were giving each other.

Yes, he knew a little about the super soldier serum. His father had known quite a lot, but he refused to admit it, too caught up in his belief that only the great _Steve Rodgers_ could handle it. To this day, he remained right, but only because Shield and everyone else was getting involved and turning people into monsters. Only Bruce Banner and his Hulk had ever come close, and in Tony's oh-so-not-quite-humble opinion, Banner had pulled it off better.

Truth be told, from what Tony knew of the serum, if he hadn't been a firm believer in the power of science, he might even say it was a miracle Rodgers hadn't gone green instead. It seemed that was what the serum was _actually_ designed to do, except it had been gentler to the young solider it was tested out on for some unknown reason. Perhaps Howard had known what that reason was and that was why he never spoke about the serum save for the couple drunken rants Tony had been on the receiving end of as his father had babbled about long lost experiments, the serum included.

He'd heard enough to know what to do if he were so ever inclined to try the serum out again. Howard knew _exactly_ what to do but refused to say it aloud in the silent belief no one would ever be good enough to deserve that kind of power except his long lost friend. He remained silent about it even as he was ridiculed for continuing a search everyone had given up on, because he alone knew that the serum had to power to keep Rodgers alive. So, the serum remained secret in the Stark family, but for two very different reasons.

Tony pushed those thoughts aside too. Despite Dr. Kane's wide-eyed, eager look, he wasn't giving out what he knew of the serum, and that was that. So many people had died for it, and _he_ personally had lost… _everything_, in a way, indirectly because of it. Because of it and the hope it gave, Howard had spent his and Tony's entire life obsessed beyond logic. He hated the thing, hated it with a passion he just wanted to strangle, so… no. The secret of the serum was going to die with him, whenever fate chose that time to be.

"Well… apparently we made a good call in contacting you then. Do you think you can help us get him out?" Dr. Kane asked urgently, deciding the shelf the fact Tony obviously knew more than he was going to openly admit.

As he spoke, it was obvious to Tony—looking at all the people frantically trying to figure out a way to fix this—that the good captain still meant a lot to people. Tony doubted anyone here hadn't been told as a child at some point of the greatness that was Captain America.

Some small part of him wanted to answer 'no'. It wasn't as if the captain would die—he _couldn't_ die, not from frostbite anyway.

At the same time he was over the moon, getting to be the one to finally get that nagging voice in the back of his head that constantly told him he'd never be as great as his father or the hero his father had worshiped to shut up, getting to be the one to _save_ that hero.

At the same time he felt sick.

Of course he _could._ He already knew the answer to the problem he already knew would present itself if the captain had ever been found after floating for 70 years in a block of ice. He already knew what buttons to press, what calculations to run, what chemicals to call up.

Simple.

He still felt sick.

Finally, he could prevent himself no more, he finally _looked_ at the man that was still half frozen on the lab table, still frozen in uniform with that damn shield resting as if on a pedestal on a nearby table.

He was _exactly_ like the pictures Howard had shown him. He hadn't changed a fraction, he only looked like he was sleeping except for the deep blue color of his skin and the frost clinging to every bit of him. His chest didn't rise, and the monitors showed the barest hint of a pulse that would've meant nothing if it weren't for the fact this was _the_ hero, the one who would always be able to bounce back with a little push…

That little strange something inside of him finally slipped from where it'd been perched precariously and shattered. He could feel himself ripping himself in two, with his own mind.

"Seriously Doc? Give me two minutes," He scoffed in the doctors face and flashing them all a confident smile.

He wondered if the smile reached his eyes, because his words definitely didn't reach his heart.

Without much feeling in his limbs he made a show of waltzing over to the computers and commandeering them from the young lab assistants, typing away as fast as he could while still looking casual. The quicker this was over the quicker he could just run and hide and pretend the world was sane again. Pretend _his_ world was still intact.

Within minutes of furious thought and typing that only served to distract him a little, he started barking orders at the lab rats, none too kindly. He soon had his creation in a syringe and waltzed back over to the frozen hero.

He hadn't moved. Of course he hadn't, he had been waiting and not moving for 70 years for Howard Stark to finally save him, and all he got was the half-ass replacement his son was.

_This_ was the man who he'd lost his childhood to. This was the man his father had compared him to at every turn. No matter the fact he was creating computers by age four, robots by age six, and the world's first artificial intelligence by age nine, he was still not good enough for Howard Stark. Tony had _turned into_ Howard Stark, though far more brilliant, and that only served to anger the older man in his drunken rages, produced by his frustrations with his hopeless search. Tony had been the spitting image of his father, when all Howard had wanted was someone like Captain America to look up to again. Instead, he found a disappointment to look _down_ to in his son.

This was the man his father had chosen over him, the man who Tony knew better than anyone else, against his will.

And oh, how he knew Steve Rodgers wasn't to blame. He knew damn well that no matter how much he _hated_ Howard Stark for doing this to him, for giving him something impossible to live up to, he knew it was not the Captain's fault. The one thing he had learned from his father better than any other lesson in science or robotics, was that Captain America was a hero, and that Tony was not.

Everyone in this room—hell, this _country—_loved this hero. It was obvious in their eyes the same way their annoyance and impatience with him was as obvious as if it were still his father's face looking back at him at every turn. A suit of iron was a cheap trick compared to the real hero, and everyone knew it. It made every fake word out of his mouth taste like bitter honey.

And just like that he was thirteen again, getting his ass handed to him by a drunk of a father because Howard Stark had just spent 10 months out searching and _again_ failed at bringing his long lost friend home. He was that small twerp who'd gone to college four years too early, that nerd everyone kicked as they passed, just like a rock on a sidewalk, simply because they could.

And so, that something inside him broke just a little more, grinding into dust, only it was ok this time. He already knew he wasn't worth much besides a fat check, and no one with the exception of possibly Pepper would ever care if he just faded away and left them all alone. Depressing as it sounded, he'd gotten used to that feeling a long time ago. These past months of being Iron Man made him forget, just for a little, that he wasn't truly worth a dime. This was just life reminding him that it was still painfully true.

So he might've felt like crying, but _Tony Stark_ doesn't hesitate, especially not when being watched. So he acted on autopilot, numb and blind.

After all, the world needed a real hero again.

He jabbed the syringe into the captain's chest, into his still human heart, not wired and mechanized like his own, and pushed down the release. After a few seconds he pulled it out and took a step back. He turned on his heel, making to leave, almost out the door and gone, but not before hearing the soft sound of someone inhaling slightly in the silent room, and the rapid beeping of a machine announcing a returning heart.


	2. The Heat of the Sun

There were many things you could say about Tony Stark, ranging from good and bad. Tony never cared, he was who he was and it was only the things that bothered _him_ that he ever gave a second thought to.

His stubbornness he often liked, it meant he got his way most of the time. Other times, it made Pepper's eyes flash in true irritation, and he wondered why he had to be this way.

And a couple times, he cursed out heaven and hell for his unyielding nature.

It wasn't _fair. _

It wasn't the first time he'd skated by death's clutches, missing only by a hair, but it was the first time he only had one reason not to just reach out and take the reaper by the hand in a firm handshake. They were old friends at this point, it wouldn't be too bad he figured.

There were those years he made it a point to crash every car he got before it reached its first birthday. He'd lost count of how many times he'd tried to drink himself to death and come pretty damn close to it. Those years had passed though, or lessened at the very least.

He was his worst before he was even legal, still in college and currently trying his damnedest to ignore his father. He drank, totaled cars, ripped up private property, done drugs, trespassed, vandalized, stolen things, got thrown in jail for a ridiculous amount of completely stupid things, drained his father's credit cards and tried _hard_ to destroy the Stark family name. It wasn't an accident he was the world's worst teenager, it was completely and one hundred percent on purpose.

But Howard and Maria Stark were ghosts, they never said a thing.

And then they died.

And perhaps he continued to act in his self-destructive way in the odd, slightly psychotic mindset that he could still catch their attention beyond the grave. When he realized how _stupid_ that was and how damaging those thoughts were to his sanity, he shut up and just built the damn weapons Obie wanted of him.

He still drank, he still crashed things. He tried to have fun, but with less 'intent to destroy' and more 'intent to forget'. He only ever managed to do half of both.

So there were those stupid times he almost greeted death like an old poker buddy.

There were the years when Howard Stark was still alive and still paid attention to him. He counted five times he was hospitalized in direct relation to Howard Stark's fists. He thought perhaps there were two more instances he _should've_ been hospitalized but wasn't for one reason or another. Perhaps his mother was too drunk to notice to call for help. There was only once out of those times that everyone assumed he _had_ died for about twenty minutes until some very clever doctor brought him back.

Being blown up by one of his own bombs was a new sort of near-death experience, and it sort of brought back an old nostalgia for alcohol poisoning, odd as that sounds. Self destruction back then was at least purposeful. And less explosive.

Having open-heart surgery while completely awake convinced him that karma was a stone cold bitch, and he must have earned himself a prime spot in hell for his first two and a half decades of life. If he'd been anything less than a man built on science, he'd say there was a god out there who hated his guts with an alarmingly unholy passion for a deity.

Being tortured by terrorists unraveled his once-brilliant mind into useless pieces of scrap metal that even he couldn't use. Death was less threatening there, because he knew they wanted him to live to endure so much more.

But there was something fundamentally horrible about being lost in a dessert, the blood of perhaps his first honest friend still caked in his hands. The screams of the men who'd ripped him apart echoing like ghosts in his ears.

He'd escaped, yes. It was far from graceful, he still free fell three hundred feet into hot sand in a giant iron suit _not_ meant for a cushy landing, his shoulder was still shattered and he was bleeding. But it felt like he'd been bleeding, burning, drowning for months now, so it didn't matter.

Never once had he ever considered giving up. It wasn't in his lexicon, and it never had been. No matter how self-destructive he got, he never just _gave up_. He may have taken the drugs, drank the alcohol, crashed the cars, he may have done it all but it was different somehow. Different from hanging himself from the ceiling or using the plethora of weapons his hands created to just end it.

He'd been tortured. Yes, despite the fact it had been his life for the past three months, the information was still slow to sink in. Not once did he ever consider giving in, giving them the weapons they wanted. He only told them yes when—in the odd revelation one got after being resuscitated from having been drowned—he had a clear thought and imagined up the suit. And still, that wasn't giving in, that was fighting.

He'd killed them all. Burned them, smashed them with iron hands, ripped the guns from their hands and used them to make sure they'd never hurt anyone ever again—especially not with _his_ creations. He made sure of it all.

And then Yinsen had died. The kind doctor who'd ripped into his heart and somehow re-started it for good, who was the first person in… his life really to show honest kindness towards him. And he'd died, bleeding out in his arms and a small smile saying that he was going to see his family now. Family, that Tony's own weapons had killed.

Never, in all the months they'd spent together, did the man ever show any animosity toward him, when perhaps he had more reason than anyone Tony had ever met to hate him. It was easy to realize, as he lay dying, that this was the man who should have been his father. The aging doctor did in three months what Howard Stark had failed to do in 17 years, and actually taught Tony something about living.

_Don't waste your life._

Yinsen's last words had been for _him._

Wandering in the desert, wondering if anyone was still looking for him, he realized it might be too late. He had wasted his life. It had been by design, but still. He'd never had anyone to disappoint before. No one ever cared enough to expect anything other than disappointment from him.

Why did that strange but kind old man even care? About _him?_ Of all people why _him?_ He was the worst sort of person, he knew that.

No one cared about him. Rhodey and Pepper put up with him, the only two in the world—including his parents—who ever had. They'd care if he died, but it wouldn't rip their world in two like it would if _he_ lost one of _them. _They were so much stronger than he was, they could live past that.

_Don't waste your life._

Never had Tony ever wanted to give up before. It wasn't who he was.

But oh, how he wanted to now. Yinsen was gone. It wasn't right. It should have been him.

_Don't waste your life._

His chest hurt, almost as if Yinsen's hands were still wiring hot copper wires into his dying heart. This arc reactor wasn't meant to live inside a human body, it wasn't meant to power a heart. And humans weren't supposed to run on batteries. They weren't supposed to survive this long so damaged, so broken both inside and out.

_Why_ did he have to be so stubborn!? Why couldn't he just _give up!?_

_Don't waste your life._

Oh yeah… that's why.


	3. The Music of Ghosts

Some days, Tony sat at the piano in his unused living room and picked mindlessly at the keys. Sometimes he found himself playing a song he'd thought he'd forgotten or perfecting a line that used to give him trouble.

He didn't tell people he could play, just like he didn't tell them who taught him either.

Because it wasn't Howard Stark, the man who taught him every science known to man, it was just a businessman at his father's company, Obadiah Stane.

He hated seeing the piano sitting here most days, but he couldn't bring himself to just leave it out of the designs next time he trashed the place and had to rebuild it. It wasn't the same piano he'd learned on, but it was still a baby grand with the same white and black keys and the same notes played if he were willing to play them.

It was like he was four years old again, barely able to get himself up onto the bench and look directly up at the giant of the man letting his thick fingers with shiny golden rings trail across the keys far too gracefully for someone so gruff most of the time. He could still hear the notes being played, and for the briefest moment he believed if he turned around Obie would be sitting there again, plucking away and rolling his eyes at whatever he'd come to talk to him about this time.

He was at the piano when Tony had come home from winning his first scientific award at the age of five. He was waiting for him at the piano when he got out of juvey the first time. And the second and the third and the several times thereafter. He was there after he crashed his first car, got into his first fight, after several horrible fights with his father, after he'd come home after having been told by his parents that under no circumstances would Tony ever do anything that _wasn't_ building weapons and Tony had run away to Italy for a month in protest.

Always he'd walk in and there was Obie, sitting at some damn piano with a box of pizza from Tony's favorite pizzeria in New York, no matter if they happened to be in Malibu, Berlin, or Tokyo. He'd be sitting there with a disappointed/amused shake of his head, playing away as he calmly reminded Tony in that deep voice of his that there was a plan, that Howard wasn't the devil, that he may have screwed up but he needed to focus now, blah, blah, blah.

Every time. It was like no matter how wild he got he could always come back to a room with Obie, a piano, pizza, and a lecture. And then everything would be alright again. Obie would talk to Howard, cool him off so he didn't beat his son to death for screwing up yet again, and talk Tony back into cooperating at least a little. He had no clue how the man did it, seeing as very few people on the earth could ever talk Tony into anything, but somehow Obadiah Stane was Tony's voice of reason long before he'd ever met Pepper and Rhodey.

In Tony's mind, Obie _was_ his father. The man who told him what was right, not just punished him for what was wrong. Howard was like this threatening force he had to answer to every time he screwed up, but Obie was who tried to talk him down from it, who tried to actually teach him. So maybe Obie was a businessman, not a scientist, Tony had tried hard to be more like him than Howard. It hurt more to let Obie down than to let Howard down.

And Obie had always wanted him to be a weapons inventor. Tony still remembered the day he built his first missile and Howard had showed him the war footage of it being used in action.

He'd only been six.

He didn't want to do it, even that young, but Howard would yell. Obie would smile and pat him on the head and say it was for the best. Obie made sure no footage ever reached him, he made sure his little inventor was perfectly protected in a little bubble of illusion, shielding him from the truth about what his weapons were actually doing, where they were going.

Tony was a genius, of course he knew. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Obie did this for him and he used to love Obie for it. He used to think it was because the man cared, because he knew building these weapons was _important_ and that he knew Tony didn't want to hear the god awful truth.

He was like Tony's protector. The man who deflected Howard, press, the SI board, critics, everything, so Tony could just live in his own screwed up little fantasy.

Tony couldn't remember a time he'd been truly, all-around happy and it hadn't involved being drunk. But, he did know he was happier when Obie was still the man he let Tony believe him to be, when he was still sitting at a piano and making every little trouble all better.

Tony was no stranger to hardship despite the fact he had every material need he could want. It wasn't a hardship of necessities, but an utter lack of something else, something vital. He lacked people who cared, he lacked love, and before there was Pepper and Rhodey, there was only ever Obie. And even then, Obie was like a strict uncle. But he was still the closest thing to a father and a true caregiver Tony had ever experienced, so perhaps he'd built it up in his head over time.

Everyone had always told him to build his weapons and shut up. Stop making a scene, just build your weapons and grow up. Stop acting destructively, just build that destruction in the form of bombs and a high tech arsenal.

Obie wanted the profit. Rhodey wanted the best tools for his brothers in uniforms. Pepper just did her job for Stark Industries.

Why had no one ever said he didn't have to build weapons? Why had no one ever given him the option to become a doctor or a physicist like Bruce? He would have loved to study the stars, to build rocket ships to take mankind off this planet. Hell, he figured he might have even loved to study biology and done some neat things for the environment.

But no, _weaponry _had to be his specialty.

Murder. Death. Destruction.

It came easy to him, but he wished it didn't. He wished he hadn't been raised like that, raised by voices in his ears telling him to be the Merchant of Death he grew up to be. Why had no one ever bothered to mention that it didn't have to be this way? Why had no one ever given a hint that becoming one of the world's most widely known mass murderers by the age of ten wasn't exactly a good thing? Why did they have to reward the death?

Why did _Obie?_

Why did Obie do any of it, is a better question. Why did Obie pretend to care, why did he decide Tony was no longer worth his time, why did he decide to kill him instead of just outing him from the company?

Even now, after so long, Tony can't reconcile the ghost of the man sitting at the piano with the terrorists who'd tortured him.

He couldn't.

Obie had been his protector, he _couldn't_ have tried to kill him. Even as Tony watched Obie take the arc reactor out of his chest, heard him admit to trying to have him kidnapped and killed by the Ten Rings, fought against him in the stolen Iron Monger suit… even with all that, Tony still sat at the piano sometimes.

He sat here, his calloused mechanics fingers dancing over the keys and remembering a man with large, gruff hands gently teaching him the scales. He heard the echo of his gruff voice scolding him kindly for some transgression, promising he'd take care of it.

Even knowing that man had been lying, using him, betraying him, even knowing that man had manipulated him into becoming the world's greatest war monger, even knowing he'd done nothing more than take what Tony had created to sell to the highest bidder and tried to terminate him when the profit slowed…

Tony missed him.

And he would delete Jarvis before he admitted it.

That man had betrayed him, tried to kill him in a way somehow worse than Howard nearly beating him to death. Tony should be furious, murderously angry at Obadiah Stane. He should hate the guy, he should be spitting on his grave and snarling his name in utter disgust and loathing.

But he didn't. He missed the man.

He was still gone, dead indirectly by Tony's hand—but then again, how many people were dead indirectly by his hands? Tony didn't know if he could handle ever facing Obie after his betrayal, but that did stop the surge of sorrow he felt, sitting at this piano.

He didn't want the lies or the manipulation. He didn't want the monster Obie had turned out to be. He didn't truly want him to return from the dead or to return back to sitting here playing the keys with pizza waiting nearby.

He just missed him, and that was all.

It was childish and he knew Pepper would insist he get his head checked if he ever told her, but he couldn't change it. He could never forgive Obie for turning him into a weaponist, a murder, for taking his childhood like he'd always blamed Howard for doing. He could never forgive him for putting him through the torture of the Ten Rings and the arc reactor. He could never forgive him for the broken trust—the shattered trust he couldn't bring himself to give to anyone ever again.

He would never forgive Obadiah.

But that didn't stop him from sitting at the piano some days.

It didn't stop him from missing a dream.


	4. The Fire of the Stars

Tony enjoyed the stars, he always had.

It was one of the reasons he called Malibu home over New York and the other cities he'd built houses in. There was just something about standing on a balcony overlooking the dark sea at night, endless stars stretching out towards the horizon. It was one of his favorite views in this world, and it only got better once he'd developed his suit. He couldn't recall having so much fun in his life, testing out the power of flight those first few days, spinning semi-uncontrollably against the velvet night and tiny little stars flickering so far above.

It was that drive, that urge, to get closer to them that drove him to test how high he could fly. It was what taught him his suit tended to build up a serious ice-layer way up there and he'd later used that information against Obadiah in his crude Iron Monger suit, so in a round-about way, the stars had saved his life.

There was nothing like flying: no thrill, no drug, no vice so enticing to him as being able to get just that much closer to the stars, to feel that free. It sparked something in his brain and his heart, it gave him odd moments of true clarity, it gave him breaks of character. He found forgiveness from old grudges, mercy from those who'd pissed him off, escape from nightmares and ghosts, and some days it even gave him a reason to live again.

He got to see the stars up close, just once.

When he'd tracked down that nuke headed for Manhattan, he didn't actually think very hard about getting beneath it. The numbers all added up to the most logical answer available, and Tony was nothing if not addicted to his mistress of science.

Tony had killed a lot of people in his life, with his weapons. This weapon, this _nuclear bomb_, had partly been developed by his father and the missiles propelling it were probably in some way his design too. If it reached its destination…

Well, it _couldn't_ reach its destination.

It wasn't an option.

And the life of Anthony Stark was nothing compare to that. Hell, it might even be penance, if he believed in such a thing. Death was no stranger to him, although the unknown was (obviously).

The unknown scared him. That portal scared him.

But the unexpected bonus of slowly having the air ripped out of his lungs and the light in his chest go glacial, was that he got to see the stars.

It was beautiful, in a horribly terrifying way.

He'd tried to call Pepper, but she didn't pick up. And then he was in space and she was gone, Jarvis was gone, the suit was gone, and is was just… dark. And cold.

For a few moments, he wondered if it was the vacuum or the loneliness that was crushing him, but then the nuke hit home and he forgot all about being afraid and alone and cold and in pain.

An alien star burned deep red behind a thousand million small black silhouettes, all tiny little ships of Chitauri ready to invade his home, reduced to dark specks from their distance. But the main attraction was the mother ship, and it was on fire.

Not many people on earth could say they'd seen a nuclear bomb go off in space, but Tony would be the first to say it was breathtaking, and terrifying. The stars, the fire, the suffocating feeling of being so, so _small_ and… well, the suffocating in general.

He was thankful it all went black right before the fire reached him.

He was thankful he got to see the stars.


End file.
